Greg Sargent: …. Yesterday in the Senate, Republicans – joined by two Dems – unanimously blocked passage of Obama’s jobs bill, even though a majority of the Senate wanted to act. While this was a defeat for Obama, it also gave the White House the positioning it wants for the next phase of this fight, in which Obama will now pressure Congress to take a stand on individual pieces of his plan. Which is to say, Obama will pressure Congress to reveal whether it’s willing to take any action at all at a time of nine percent unemployment and mass economic suffering and anxiety.

Meanwhile, the Republican candidates met for a debate last night, and they uniformly agreed on one thing: Government is the problem, and must be rolled back on multiple fronts if we are to have any hope of a recovery.

And so, the White House, facing certain defeat on the jobs bill, at least established a baseline for the 2012 fight, which will be all about a simple question: Can and should our public officials act to bring relief to the American people at a time of national crisis? Or should government simply move out of the way and let the private sector right itself of its own accord?

…. The media play the White House wanted: The AP headline tells the story just as the White House hoped: “Senate Republicans vote to kill Obama’s jobs bill.”

This is the positioning the White House was going for: Republicans blocked the will of the majority by killing Obama’s effort at action on unemployment, and now Obama will continue the campaign by demanding they take a stand on the bill’s individual provisions, which poll very well.

Press conference after press conference President Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney said that the senate should pass the jobs bill as a whole, but the press kept saying the senate won’t pass the jobs bill as a whole. Low and behold the senate didn’t pass the jobs bill as a whole. So now President Obama will make the senate vote on each and every piece of his jobs bill. The republican senators will vote no on keeping teachers employed, the republican senators will vote no on fixing our crumbling infrastructure and so forth and so on. So now the republican senators have to stand up each and everyday and vote no on helping our struggling economy. It’s called death by a thousand cuts. President Obama didn’t get his jobs bill passed as a whole, but he did give the republicans their choice of poison. The beauty of this is that the republicans have assured themselves a slow and painful defeat. The cynic in me says that President Obama knew all along that his jobs bill wouldn’t get passed as a whole, and that’s why he was going around the country, just to get the people behind him.

The funny part is that the Professional left was saying that this is the Obama they voted for, the passionate fighting Obama. The Professional left has been neutralized, they can’t come out now and bad mouth President Obama because if they do they will be accused of talking out of both sides of their mouths.

I didn’t see President Obama’s plan, but now I do, and if you ask me it is a brilliant plan.